Dear parents and guardians,

I hope your all keeping warm during this cold snap!!!!

I want to keep you all up to date with the success our children are having, but also work with you on helping them with some of their struggles.

A struggle our kids are having at the moment is around conflict over religious beliefs.

We all strive to be inclusive of all beliefs. We all come from different countries, different cultures and ways of living in the world. What is similar is the values we hold of respect, honesty, Pride and Success. We are aiming for a community that shows kindness to all.

Our young people often find it confusing that all people do not share the same beliefs and when they are young, they get defensive about the beliefs that are family/ community based. This is underneath the conflicts and arguments we are seeing at the moment particularly around religious beliefs.

This can be an uncomfortable issue to tackle because we may have been brought up not to talk about politics or religion. We may feel uncomfortable about how to deal with issues that we may have strong personal beliefs about.

We have a role to support our kids and the community to navigate inclusion and acceptance of difference in religion, culture, gender, race, identity.

One way we can navigate a tricky conversation is make the distinction between beliefs and values.

We all may have different beliefs but there are similar values at home at school and in the community.

E.g. A common value for all humans is to show respect. It is one of our school values

In our religion we have beliefs about the way we show respect
At school we have beliefs about how we show respect

Our religious beliefs are personal and family and are demonstrated at home.

At school we know that we have school ways of showing respect. We all do not have to have the same religious beliefs. Even in one religion, we may show our values differently. This is a choice for you and your family. At school we demonstrate our values through the Values matrix

We do not use put downs about home beliefs,

We do not pressure anyone to believe the same thing.

We work together to make sure we are inclusive and learning together in a way that shows respect for all.

No one in our school should be going home and worried about their families' choices of food or celebrations. While we are at school we will celebrate and live our values as a learning community. Wherever possible we will celebrate and learn from each other's unique cultures and like all Australians be enriched from our diversity not divided by it.

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Sayfanın alt kısmındaki dil düğmesini tıklayarak bu haber bültenini kendi dilinize çevirebilirsiniz.

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